- Email: [email protected]
This is what the game is about
VIEWPOINTS
Most of the radio interviews, arranged for the Friday morning (Aug 22), took place in the BBC Scotland studios in Edinburgh. The interviews were straightforward, and granted us the opportunity to correct the inaccuracies we had seen in print. The live format was reassuring, since we heard the entire broadcast, were in complete control of our replies to the questions, and were at liberty to clarify or add information where necessary. Prerecorded interviews were used for news releases on national BBC stations on the Friday. Mostly, we were able to explain the design of the study and the nuances of the findings. On the down side, the radio interest dominated our work schedule during the Thursday and Friday. Our desire to reshape the distortion created by the newspapers made it difficult to remain unmoved by producers’ urgency to fill programme space. Nonetheless, these interviews did give us back some sense of control that we had lost in the first media frenzy.
What price publicity? This intense and transient media interest caused us to reflect on the costs and benefits to the research community of mass publicity of their findings. For the funding body there is publicity leading to the donation of more funds. For the scientific journal there is greater attention, leading to higher circulation, increased advertising, greater profits, and a better impact factor. For the news media there is a “sexy” medical story or the opportunity to deride the findings, as in the Express editorial, “Science proves that granny was right all along—part 1,678,939”. For we three media-shy researchers, the benefits were to provide our funding body with increased public exposure, and to provide our employer, the university, with what we hoped would be welcome publicity. The costs were watching data from thousands of patients collected over several years trivialised, distorted, and used in some outlets to support a set of misogynistic attitudes. There was a positive side too. A generally good press release—as produced by the British Heart Foundation—was often used with little alteration as a newspaper “story”.
Self-criticism, problems, and remedies Could we have handled things better? We should have been less obliging in allowing the sex differences to be mentioned so prominently in the press release. We should have been more formal with tabloid and news agency journalists. We suggest that quotes should be limited to a formal press release; “quotes” arising from conversations with them may be nothing of the kind. We held back from writing to the papers to correct the distortions. In the present case this proved correct, because the story died quickly. However, the fallacious women-safer-ashousewives angle kindled its own follow-on media interest and this was killed only by refusing to comment further. We could have been more active in helping journalists to frame a popular version of the story; but the original press release seems as far as we could go without trivialising the research. We could have compiled a list of statements about what the study did not imply, but none of us foresaw the housewife angle. There are genuine problems in disseminating scientific findings via popular media. The news media have deadlines that are foreign to researchers. Scientists may experience loss of control when their story is exposed
THE LANCET • Vol 351 • June 6, 1998
outside the scientific press: caveats and considered responses are unwelcome. Scientific stories are picked up arbitrarily by the media, and are given a titbit approach. Thus, stories often have no wider context and no public knowledge base. At worst, this can make scientific research seem like a disconnected and contradictory stream of faddish ideas: issues of diet and food safety have suffered especially badly in this regard. Moreover, different parts of the media want scientists to retell their story in a way that will fit in with their own agendas. If only one could tell it once and tell it well. Despite these problems we should communicate scientific findings via the popular news media. The public has a right to know what we are up to. It is not too pious to hope that scientists could educate the media about the nature of scientific discovery. Most studies are not breakthroughs; neither are they the fancies of otherworldly scientists. The media are quite prepared to report political stories incrementally, week after week, as new events occur. Reporting science should be similar: it emits a genuinely interesting series of stories-inevolution, whose understanding requires background knowledge and frequent and accurate (and well-told) updating. Reference 1
Whiteman MC, Deary IJ, Lee AJ, Fowkes FGR. Submissiveness and protection from coronary heart disease in the general population: Edinburgh Artery Study. Lancet 1997; 350: 541–45.
This is what the game is about Jeremy Laurance Looking at the panel accompanying the previous article by Professor Deary and colleagues (page 1726),1 I have no doubt which headline wins the prize. The Telegraph sub-editor who wrote “Put down that rolling pin darling . . .” deserves the traditional bottle of Veuve Cliquot. How many readers, I wonder, were able to pass that headline without the flicker of a smile? For this is what the game is about: stopping readers in their tracks long enough to read the story. If they do not read the story, the whole enterprise in which we are engaged is pointless. We might as well unplug our keyboards and go home. The first rule of journalism is that what is published must be read. No matter how great the discovery or how important the revelation, a piece is worthless unless it is presented in a way that makes the reader want to read it. Newspapers are not mere repositories of information. They are organs grappling for readers’ attention against burning toast, mewling infants, windy station platforms, and crowded bars. They are engaged in cut-throat competition with rivals who are seeking by every means, fair and foul, to increase their share of a diminishing total market. Lancet 1998; 351: 1727–28 The Independent, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL, UK (J Laurance, health editor)
1727
VIEWPOINTS
Medical researchers (and other academics) are sometimes misled by the idea that a newspaper’s job is to hold a mirror up to the world. That is like saying a soccer player’s job is to put the ball in the back of the opposing team’s net. If only it were that simple. What the newspaper has to do, in the case of medical research, is make the work produced by the researcher accessible to readers who lack the expertise, the time, the energy, and the will to make sense of it. All this may seem obvious, but it is remarkable how often it is ignored. A useful device for understanding the way newspapers work is the pub test. You have just completed your latest manuscript on the protective effect of submissiveness against heart attacks and you are going out for a drink with (non-medical) friends who ask you what it says. You have about 15 seconds to grab their attention before your wise-cracking neighbour interrupts. Do you begin by (a) describing the relation between type A behaviour and coronary heart disease, (b) discussing the meaning of meta-analysis, or (c) saying “This one should worry Edwina Currie and her ilk”. You think this is trivialising serious research? I disagree. I think it is fulfilling the journalist’s, and the scientist’s, duty to communicate research findings to as wide an audience as possible. Professor Deary seemed happy to go along with the publicity drive for his paper organised by the British Heart Foundation and then dismayed by its success. As he almost but not quite acknowledges the publicity was good for the funding body (the British Heart Foundation), good for his employer (the University of Edinburgh), and good for him and his colleagues. I understand his desire to retain greater control of the story—something that is easier to do in a live radio interview than in conversation with a tabloid reporter—and I cannot defend the distortion of quotes that he reports. But the failure to anticipate the “housewife” angle might have been avoided with advice from a public relations consultant versed in the ways of the media. Newspapers will always seek to relate research findings to readers’ common experiences. Professor Deary tried to help by translating submissiveness as “meek”. A housewife, however, has the advantage of not being an abstract term; rather she is a solid, recognisable person with whom readers can identify. Housewives may be bossy just as boxers may be kind but, rightly or wrongly, this is not how they are popularly seen. As any public relations executive will tell you, however,
1728
it is very difficult to judge which stories will run. Much depends on the mood of the press at the time, what else is going on, and how the story is presented. Professor Deary suggests that quotes be limited to a formal press release, and, if interviews are given at all, researchers should be guarded about them. This reminds me of the furore that regularly used to greet the sell-off of public utilities like British Gas under the previous government. If the sale went well there was a chorus of criticism that the price was too low. If it did not, that obviously meant the price was too high. There is no correct way of doing these things. Limiting the press release to formal quotes, with no interviews permitted, could have killed the story altogether or reduced it to a nib (News in Brief—the column of short stories deemed not interesting enough to warrant proper display in the paper and reduced to a paragraph in what is regarded by reporters as the paper’s graveyard). Would that have been better—3 years’ research condensed into a dozen words? Newspapers and other media feed off each other, as Professor Deary discovered. Some stories acquire a momentum of their own, as this one did. It had all the right elements of a threat to health that could be related, just about, to modern lifestyles. There is one other point. The story appeared in August, the month known in newspaper and parliamentary circles as the “silly season” because so little happens that anything may be seized upon to fill the gaping pages. Stories published in August can acquire a momentum that they would never enjoy at another time of year. Professor Deary’s research yielded interesting and significant results that fully deserved the coverage they got. I am frankly puzzled by his final point that science should be reported incrementally, as politics is, week after week. Most media have long had science and medical correspondents who are reporting daily on the developments in their fields. I suspect, with time, his recollection of the inaccuracies and distortions in reports of his work will diminish and he will recall the national attention his research received with fondness and even a measure of justified pride.
Reference 1
Deary IJ, Whiteman MC, Fowkes FGR. Medical research and the popular media. Lancet 1998; 351: 1726–27.
THE LANCET • Vol 351 • June 6, 1998
Most of the radio interviews, arranged for the Friday morning (Aug 22), took place in the BBC Scotland studios in Edinburgh. The interviews were straightforward, and granted us the opportunity to correct the inaccuracies we had seen in print. The live format was reassuring, since we heard the entire broadcast, were in complete control of our replies to the questions, and were at liberty to clarify or add information where necessary. Prerecorded interviews were used for news releases on national BBC stations on the Friday. Mostly, we were able to explain the design of the study and the nuances of the findings. On the down side, the radio interest dominated our work schedule during the Thursday and Friday. Our desire to reshape the distortion created by the newspapers made it difficult to remain unmoved by producers’ urgency to fill programme space. Nonetheless, these interviews did give us back some sense of control that we had lost in the first media frenzy.
What price publicity? This intense and transient media interest caused us to reflect on the costs and benefits to the research community of mass publicity of their findings. For the funding body there is publicity leading to the donation of more funds. For the scientific journal there is greater attention, leading to higher circulation, increased advertising, greater profits, and a better impact factor. For the news media there is a “sexy” medical story or the opportunity to deride the findings, as in the Express editorial, “Science proves that granny was right all along—part 1,678,939”. For we three media-shy researchers, the benefits were to provide our funding body with increased public exposure, and to provide our employer, the university, with what we hoped would be welcome publicity. The costs were watching data from thousands of patients collected over several years trivialised, distorted, and used in some outlets to support a set of misogynistic attitudes. There was a positive side too. A generally good press release—as produced by the British Heart Foundation—was often used with little alteration as a newspaper “story”.
Self-criticism, problems, and remedies Could we have handled things better? We should have been less obliging in allowing the sex differences to be mentioned so prominently in the press release. We should have been more formal with tabloid and news agency journalists. We suggest that quotes should be limited to a formal press release; “quotes” arising from conversations with them may be nothing of the kind. We held back from writing to the papers to correct the distortions. In the present case this proved correct, because the story died quickly. However, the fallacious women-safer-ashousewives angle kindled its own follow-on media interest and this was killed only by refusing to comment further. We could have been more active in helping journalists to frame a popular version of the story; but the original press release seems as far as we could go without trivialising the research. We could have compiled a list of statements about what the study did not imply, but none of us foresaw the housewife angle. There are genuine problems in disseminating scientific findings via popular media. The news media have deadlines that are foreign to researchers. Scientists may experience loss of control when their story is exposed
THE LANCET • Vol 351 • June 6, 1998
outside the scientific press: caveats and considered responses are unwelcome. Scientific stories are picked up arbitrarily by the media, and are given a titbit approach. Thus, stories often have no wider context and no public knowledge base. At worst, this can make scientific research seem like a disconnected and contradictory stream of faddish ideas: issues of diet and food safety have suffered especially badly in this regard. Moreover, different parts of the media want scientists to retell their story in a way that will fit in with their own agendas. If only one could tell it once and tell it well. Despite these problems we should communicate scientific findings via the popular news media. The public has a right to know what we are up to. It is not too pious to hope that scientists could educate the media about the nature of scientific discovery. Most studies are not breakthroughs; neither are they the fancies of otherworldly scientists. The media are quite prepared to report political stories incrementally, week after week, as new events occur. Reporting science should be similar: it emits a genuinely interesting series of stories-inevolution, whose understanding requires background knowledge and frequent and accurate (and well-told) updating. Reference 1
Whiteman MC, Deary IJ, Lee AJ, Fowkes FGR. Submissiveness and protection from coronary heart disease in the general population: Edinburgh Artery Study. Lancet 1997; 350: 541–45.
This is what the game is about Jeremy Laurance Looking at the panel accompanying the previous article by Professor Deary and colleagues (page 1726),1 I have no doubt which headline wins the prize. The Telegraph sub-editor who wrote “Put down that rolling pin darling . . .” deserves the traditional bottle of Veuve Cliquot. How many readers, I wonder, were able to pass that headline without the flicker of a smile? For this is what the game is about: stopping readers in their tracks long enough to read the story. If they do not read the story, the whole enterprise in which we are engaged is pointless. We might as well unplug our keyboards and go home. The first rule of journalism is that what is published must be read. No matter how great the discovery or how important the revelation, a piece is worthless unless it is presented in a way that makes the reader want to read it. Newspapers are not mere repositories of information. They are organs grappling for readers’ attention against burning toast, mewling infants, windy station platforms, and crowded bars. They are engaged in cut-throat competition with rivals who are seeking by every means, fair and foul, to increase their share of a diminishing total market. Lancet 1998; 351: 1727–28 The Independent, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL, UK (J Laurance, health editor)
1727
VIEWPOINTS
Medical researchers (and other academics) are sometimes misled by the idea that a newspaper’s job is to hold a mirror up to the world. That is like saying a soccer player’s job is to put the ball in the back of the opposing team’s net. If only it were that simple. What the newspaper has to do, in the case of medical research, is make the work produced by the researcher accessible to readers who lack the expertise, the time, the energy, and the will to make sense of it. All this may seem obvious, but it is remarkable how often it is ignored. A useful device for understanding the way newspapers work is the pub test. You have just completed your latest manuscript on the protective effect of submissiveness against heart attacks and you are going out for a drink with (non-medical) friends who ask you what it says. You have about 15 seconds to grab their attention before your wise-cracking neighbour interrupts. Do you begin by (a) describing the relation between type A behaviour and coronary heart disease, (b) discussing the meaning of meta-analysis, or (c) saying “This one should worry Edwina Currie and her ilk”. You think this is trivialising serious research? I disagree. I think it is fulfilling the journalist’s, and the scientist’s, duty to communicate research findings to as wide an audience as possible. Professor Deary seemed happy to go along with the publicity drive for his paper organised by the British Heart Foundation and then dismayed by its success. As he almost but not quite acknowledges the publicity was good for the funding body (the British Heart Foundation), good for his employer (the University of Edinburgh), and good for him and his colleagues. I understand his desire to retain greater control of the story—something that is easier to do in a live radio interview than in conversation with a tabloid reporter—and I cannot defend the distortion of quotes that he reports. But the failure to anticipate the “housewife” angle might have been avoided with advice from a public relations consultant versed in the ways of the media. Newspapers will always seek to relate research findings to readers’ common experiences. Professor Deary tried to help by translating submissiveness as “meek”. A housewife, however, has the advantage of not being an abstract term; rather she is a solid, recognisable person with whom readers can identify. Housewives may be bossy just as boxers may be kind but, rightly or wrongly, this is not how they are popularly seen. As any public relations executive will tell you, however,
1728
it is very difficult to judge which stories will run. Much depends on the mood of the press at the time, what else is going on, and how the story is presented. Professor Deary suggests that quotes be limited to a formal press release, and, if interviews are given at all, researchers should be guarded about them. This reminds me of the furore that regularly used to greet the sell-off of public utilities like British Gas under the previous government. If the sale went well there was a chorus of criticism that the price was too low. If it did not, that obviously meant the price was too high. There is no correct way of doing these things. Limiting the press release to formal quotes, with no interviews permitted, could have killed the story altogether or reduced it to a nib (News in Brief—the column of short stories deemed not interesting enough to warrant proper display in the paper and reduced to a paragraph in what is regarded by reporters as the paper’s graveyard). Would that have been better—3 years’ research condensed into a dozen words? Newspapers and other media feed off each other, as Professor Deary discovered. Some stories acquire a momentum of their own, as this one did. It had all the right elements of a threat to health that could be related, just about, to modern lifestyles. There is one other point. The story appeared in August, the month known in newspaper and parliamentary circles as the “silly season” because so little happens that anything may be seized upon to fill the gaping pages. Stories published in August can acquire a momentum that they would never enjoy at another time of year. Professor Deary’s research yielded interesting and significant results that fully deserved the coverage they got. I am frankly puzzled by his final point that science should be reported incrementally, as politics is, week after week. Most media have long had science and medical correspondents who are reporting daily on the developments in their fields. I suspect, with time, his recollection of the inaccuracies and distortions in reports of his work will diminish and he will recall the national attention his research received with fondness and even a measure of justified pride.
Reference 1
Deary IJ, Whiteman MC, Fowkes FGR. Medical research and the popular media. Lancet 1998; 351: 1726–27.
THE LANCET • Vol 351 • June 6, 1998